How to Explain Resistive & Capacitive Touch Screens
Resistive and capacitive touch screens are used on electronics, such as laptops, phones and other portable electronic devices. To explain how they work, you need to understand the underlying concepts of resistance and capacitance, which in turn require you to explain the basics of how a circuit works. After all, touch screens are really just circuits, following the same principles as your light switch or vacuum cleaner, with the touch screen opening or closing a circuit to send an electronic signal to the device.
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Instructions
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1
Explain the concept of a circuit, using a simple circuit as an example. Make sure you clarify that circuits function on the presence or lack of a current, and that this is how the user interacts with them.
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2
Explain that a resistive touchscreen has numerous thin layers attached to the circuit.
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3
Explain what happens when you press thin layers that are close to one another -- they touch, thus completing a circuit and sending signals to the device. This is the key point of a resistive touch screen.
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4
Point out that to physically press layers against one another, a reasonably large amount of pressure is necessary. This will illustrate the key difference between resistive and capacitive touch screens.
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5
Run some water over a plate to explain capacitive touch screen technology to your student.
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Tell your student to dip a finger in the water and look at what happens -- it makes ripples.
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7
Explain that the touch screen passes a small current over the screen in the same manner that you ran water over the plate.
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8
Explain that the capacitive touch screen can tell where you are pressing by calculating where the "ripples" are coming from in relation to the x and y axes on the screen.
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